I regularly get people contacting me through LinkedIn to ask how I started being a virtual assistant (VA). In fact, the frequency and number of enquiries prompted me to write this blog post – after all, I’m all about boosting productivity and efficiency, which is why it made sense to write an informative post and direct wannabe VAs towards it.

First and foremost, before I started my VA business, I did huge amounts of research. I spent a lot of time online digesting as many free resources as I could and absorbing all the advice and tips I was finding – there was a lot!

Google is your friend

A quick Google search for ‘how to become a virtual assistant’ yields a whopping 8.4 million results (at time of writing). Even if you just take the time to go through the first page of results alone, you’ll glean a huge amount of relevant info (as I did more than six years ago).

It’s a great resource because it’s so easy to read. I couldn’t put it down once I’d started and read it from cover to cover in no time. It was definitely worth the cost as it contained information about things I hadn’t thought about.

VA Forums/Associations

With my interest seriously piqued and my passion to learn more in overdrive, I joined the Virtual Assistant Forums. Like most Internet-based forums, this one allows you to post questions and discuss topics with people who are virtual assistants already or working towards becoming one.

A great way to gain some exposure in such forums is by linking your blog and Twitter accounts, then adding real value to the conversations that are going on. People will naturally look at your profile if they see you as someone who knows what they’re talking about and may click through to your website/social media accounts as a result.

I then joined the International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA). It’s a non-profit organisation dedicated to VA development, education and raising public awareness of what VAs do. There are several different membership categories, all of which boast a number of benefits. Check out the IVAA website for more information.

VA Directories

There are two VA directory sites that I’d recommend to anyone looking to start out in this industry: Virtual Assistantville and BeMyVA. They are great places to advertise your services and potentially secure your first clients. Be sure to check out the membership benefits of BeMyVA, as there’s a chance you could feature on their social media accounts and have your articles featured in their newsletter.

Twitter Lists

Twitter lists featuring virtual assistants are great; all you’ve got to do is find some. The easiest way to do this is by using the Twitter search feature to find out profiles relating to virtual assistance, VAs, etc. One you’ve started following some of the profiles you’ve found, go through their accounts and look at any lists they’ve created and been added to. Chances are there will be some relating solely to virtual assistance, which can join or retrieve more useful contacts from.

Hashtags like #VA and #virtualassistant are also a great way to find tweets and profiles relating to the industry.

Facebook Groups

Last, but certainly not least, are all the virtual assistant Facebook groups out there. There are so many, each with their own benefits, that I would never be able to review each one separately. However, I have compiled this list of groups to get you started:

I wanted to write a blog post today on something that people were interested in. I looked at my Google Analytics to see what the most popular posts were so I could find a topic to cover again, or in more detail, or from a different perspective but it didn’t work. I asked myself some questions, what time period should I base the stats on, should I check to see what the bounce rate was rather than just the page views… it wasn’t very helpful. I then decided to check out which of my posts received the most comments, easily done in WordPress by just sorting them into comment order (descending of course).

So rather than write about a recurring topic, I decided to use this post as an overview of the last couple of years and let you look back over the most popular posts on my blog. Those posts which received the most comments, which I am assuming are my most popular.

Three

Two

One

I was actually surprised that these were the posts which received the most comments. I feel I have written some much better posts in the last year, but I suppose these are the ones that people felt most inclined to comment on.

I’m always looking for new blog topics, so if you have a problem I can help with please do let me know in the comments.

Writing is still the most powerful marketing tool you can think of when promoting your business. You can keep reaping the benefits of your writing, in terms of traffic and sales – over and over again – for years, as long as it remains relevant to your market over time. It can also be used in maintaining your relationship with your clients or customers, and most importantly, it can be used to boost your reputation as an expert.

Writing online can be very easy, even though one can also easily get it all wrong. As an online marketer or business person, one should learn how to best utilize and seriously take advantage of this skill.

You can use writing as an effective tool for marketing your business by running a blog –and I really recommend that every business should have a blog, at least – or a website, on your social media and micro-blogging sites, on other sites – maybe in form of guest posts or comments, in your auto responder campaign, and also by writing promotional contents like web copies or sales letters – and email newsletters too. A lot can be done with this skill.

I will hereby do a quick review of the best ways you can use writing to boost your traffic and income, or leads and sales. I will be classifying them into ‘within your blog’ and ‘outside your blog’, and at the end, we’ll see how you can get the writing done.

Within Your Blog

– Useful and informative posts: You should regularly update your blog with fresh and informative posts. Always make in-depth research when writing your posts and give out only the best. Make sure you provide real solutions often.

Let your blog earn the reputation of always giving quality, and it will never be ditched by your audience. Your readers will become your evangelists, and with time your blog will become the best option for search engines for your keywords.

– Great copy/sales letter on website: Writing copy entails using the power of words to persuade readers to become buyers. A sales letter has the same purpose, but it is always more advanced and lengthier than a web copy. Your home page and/or ‘about me’ page(s) should practically be great copies or sales letters for your business. You can hire a copywriter to review these pages and edit or tweak to perfection.

You can easily learn copy writing freely with good research, or with little payment online and practice till you can produce compelling-enough copies. It will pay off in the end.

– Freebies or paid products: This can be in form of eBooks and/or eCourses. Write an eBook you know everyone in your niche would love to have and let it be of high quality, or create an eCourse that would actually add quality to the life of anyone that subscribes to the course.

You do not need to be an expert to write an eBook or create an eCourse. Simple research skills are enough to make your products great. Writing in your area of expertise is a great plus though.

Market your freebies so much, as if you will make money on them, and support your marketing with a great copy too. Market your paid products more.

– Encourage guest posts: You should encourage people to submit fresh and quality content to your blog. It helps to build relationships with other bloggers and marketers in your niche. On your own side, you gain more traffic as the writers share their contents posted on your site with their audience and social networks.

You should be careful of the posts you accept though; read through them and confirm they are 100% fresh and original. Articles must pass CopyScape. Write out your terms and conditions and make it obvious to anyone interested in submitting guest posts.

Outside your blog

– Article marketing; this is the act of creating well-written quality articles that talk about your niche in a way that subtly promotes your company or brand, or products and services, and disseminating them throughout the web.

These articles serve to draw the attention of the readers to the company or brand, and make them want to know more, thereby, leading them to visiting your website.

The essence of these articles, though, is to create credibility and good image for the brand, and not to serve as advertisement or invoke sales directly.

Articles of this sort should be between 300 and 600 words (standard) – with smaller paragraphs, and should be posted majorly to as many article directories as possible. You should focus greatly on your headline and resource box, while still giving great content.

This is the most viral form of marketing ever and the best way to reach a target audience. One advantage of article marketing is that the same article can be used or published on several platforms as long as the authorship doesn’t change.

– Guest blogging: this involves writing for other blogs with the aim of getting more exposure, traffic, and getting quality back links too.

This entails finding blogs in your niche that allow guests to submit articles and take full credit for it. This way, you take advantage of the host blog’s established online presence and you convert audience and subscribers to yours. You should therefore target big blogs in your niche – or other niches in some cases.

You can find the top blogs in any niche to post your articles to by using search engines, or by checking blog directories like Technoratti and AllTop. Just make sure your content is of great quality and highly informative, to enable acceptance and publishing of your post. It is reasonable to write 1,000 words and above, without sacrificing quality, when submitting to top blogs.

Finally before sending any blog a guest post, make sure you read through the blog. Read the terms and conditions to know what is expected, and read few posts to know the kind of writing accepted, and the way they are written. These will serve as a guide for formatting your post.

– Press release: “A press release is pseudo-news story, written in third person, that seeks to demonstrate to an editor or reporter the newsworthiness of a particular person, event, service or product.” – @PublicityGuru on Twitter

“A press release is really just another term for (hopefully intriguing) content, and as a small business communicator, it’s your job to make every word count.” – PR News

I got the above definitions from PRWeb(.com), and I believe they are explanatory enough.

I’ll just add that writing and publishing a press release about your business is a proven traffic generator.

No matter how technical it might sound, writing and publishing a PR is actually easy to do but I can’t start a lesson on that here. Here are the fundamentals though;

– Focus on good and clean writing

– Headlines and subheads matter most

– A well optimized release will hyperlink keywords.

Apart from all these, when writing a PR, you just have to stick to the facts, economize your words and make sure every word counts. Limit jargon too.

Then the big deal; distribute to Press release sites – preferably the top and paid ones. PRWeb is great. You can simply get other PR sites through search.

BIG TIP: You can get all the press release training you want for free on PRWeb.com…or you can hire an expert instead.

Getting the job done!

1. Personally: A lot of experts believe that content is king, and I think I support that notion too.

When you are writing your own posts or guest posts, it must be of the highest quality possible. Always give your writings your best shot; you cannot tell how far they would go. You should be concerned about your research, your headline – which must be very catchy, the body – considering your grammar, paragraphing, points, etc – and your ‘call to action’ where necessary.

Then you must be careful when distributing your writing to directories or PR sites. While trying to meet their terms and conditions is necessary, your copyright must not be compromised too.

2. Use article-posting software/freelancers: For your article marketing, or distribution to article directories or e-zines, you can easily find software to do the job, or articles directories freelancers through search. You can also visit freelance or micro-gigs sites to find these freelancers and get article-posting software on WarriorForum. You must only be cautious when using software, and be aware that most of the top article repositories block software from posting.

3. PR writers and distributors: You can easily find Press Release writers and distributors on freelancing sites like fiverr.com, guru.com, freelancers.com, etc, or through search engines. Just look for those freelancers with good reputation and maybe high ranks.

Your Press Release will be written and sent to you for preview, then distributed to PR sites on your approval. The links to your press releases would then be sent to you for confirmation. Most of the sites used by professional PR freelancers are paid sites.

4. PLR (Private Label Rights): This involves obtaining full rights on articles written by someone else and using it in anyway you like. These rights may include rights to publish, copy, edit, re-brand and claim authorship.

Personally, I am not a fan of Private Label Rights articles, but the truth remains that resorting to PLR has a good and right way of going about it.

The reservation I have on PLR is that most PLR providers make available rehashed content to numerous users at the same time. This leads to many others using the same content you are giving out to your audience, while branding it with their different names as ‘original author’ – just as you.

The best use of PLR, I believe, comes from buying PLR articles from the best PLR sites. You should avoid free PLR articles by all means. If you have to use PLR, then pay for quality.

5. Hire a freelance writer: whenever you feel you cannot do your writing yourself, or when you are too busy to write, you can outsource your writing to freelancers. But you must be careful when employing freelance writers for your writing projects as quality must always be maintained. Your freelancer must have the ability to do quality research and produce fresh, quality content. Rehashed or stolen content must never find its way into your business.

You can always go to freelance sites like freelancer.com, Odesk, Guru, etc, to get your job done. But when making use of sites like these, you have to be very careful as it might be very hard to find quality where services are so cheap.

You can preferably list your writing needs and requirements on freelance writing job boards such as ProBlogger Job Boards, etc. You can try LinkedIn’s job listing too or simply search for ‘freelance writing job boards’ on any search engine.

I believe planning and channeling your writing towards the methods outlined above will ensure a successful marketing campaign for your business online, as far as writing is concerned. Other minor writings, like blog comments, social media interaction, forum posting, etc, that are not covered here should not be neglected or underestimated though.

Improving your writing skills and applying it for, and to, the right marketing strategy will definitely boost your leads and sales.

P.S: Kindly tell us how you use writing to boost your traffic and income, and kindly show your support or disagreements with what I’ve written, in the comments section. And don’t forget to share with your networks.

Author Bio:

Yomi-Alliyu Oludami is a professional freelance writer and the founder of www.lucrativepen.com, a blog that teaches how to write for money and traffic. You can visit his website to learn more or hire him for your writing projects.

Tips: Working with a Virtual Assistant… from the viewpoint of a Virtual Assistant

I don’t think many of you will have, because when I started out 18 months ago I had never even heard of virtual assistants. I fell into this job, utilising my experience and skills from the workplace and transferring them over to my own business. Obviously when I finally realised what I was I found lots of information online about virtual assistants, and now, well for me I feel as though we’re over-run with them, maybe because I have come across so many lovely VA’s on social media.

When you’re working with a virtual assistant it’s very easy to come up against some issues which you wouldn’t necessarily find in the workplace. For example, you think of a task you want to delegate to the office administrator so you wander through to their office and pass on the task. You can’t do that with a VA, you have to physically write out an email or give them a quick call – it doesn’t take any longer than walking into another office, but I bet it feels like more work and that it would be easier just to do the task yourself.

But why employ a VA at all if you’re not going to delegate tasks so you can get on with more important things?

Here are some tips on how you can work effectively with a virtual assistant:

Organisation – When you hire a VA, write down exactly what tasks you would like to delegate to them so when these tasks pop up you can easily delegate it without thinking. Eventually some regular tasks your VA will be able to keep track of without your input, which saves you even more time.

Quirks – Everyone has different quirks in work and life, it might be useful when you get started to go over the necessary ones with your VA. Explain how you like things done, even if it’s something small, it will save extra explanation later on.

Instructions and Deadlines – These are really important, any new task you want your VA to complete you need to provide clear, concise instructions and the deadline. A VA will have other clients to deal with, so having deadlines means they are able to prioritise their work and get things back to you when you require them, rather than them second guessing when you need it done by.

Communication – At the beginning of your working relationship with your VA ensure you agree on the forms of communication you’ll use. If it’s mainly via email, a small tip would be to send all instructions in 1 email rather than 10! Your VA could well become overwhelmed with the amount of email they are receiving with every little task, and times that by say 6 clients and you can easily see how this isn’t effective communication. Make sure when communicating that you have given clear expectations, specific instructions and you respond to any enquiries from your VA in a timely way.

Slow Down – Don’t run before you can walk. When you first start working with a VA it may take some time before you are in a regular routine and they are knowledgeable about your procedures and tasks. As in any new job it takes time to learn new things. Don’t expect your VA to know everything at the start.

Be Aware of Time – Many VA’s work office hours, so when you send over an urgent email ensure you’ve thought about what the time is and whether your VA will be able to take care of it right that second. You also have to consider time zones, your VA could be sleeping so won’t receive your email until a few hours after you’ve sent it.

I work with a handful of clients providing them with virtual assistance and each one is very different. I have some which are not willing to let go of things and don’t email me often with tasks, I am forever chasing them up to see if they have anything for me to do. Other clients email me everyday, sometimes more than once (see point 4). Each client is different, they have their quirks, their different ways of working which means a VA has to adapt to many situations.

Above all, be nice to your VA and I am sure you will have a very successful working relationship!

Being self-employed can be very empowering, no strict working hours, you can sit at your desk in your PJ’s if you like, you don’t have to answer to a ‘boss’ and many other benefits.

All these things are good, but what if you end up working more hours than when you were an employee? You can’t just walk away from work and forget about it until 9am the next morning.

I have been working for myself for nearly 18 months, when I sat down and looked at my bottom line a few weeks ago while writing down my 2013 goals, I realised that I am working more hours but earning quite a bit less than in my last job! I’ve managed, I had savings and living in France isn’t as expensive as England, but it’s got to the point where I need to think about how I am going to earn a reasonable income but not work so many hours.

Regular Clients

As my business has progressed I have been doing more and more one-off jobs, mainly eBook formatting. This makes me a reasonable amount of money, if I added up all the hours I spend on formatting and divide it by the income it produces I’d be getting my hourly rate or more, which is great. But having one-off jobs is ok, if you have regular clients to keep the money flowing in when you don’t have any one-off jobs. You end up in a vicious circle of one-off job, looking for work, another one-off job, looking for more work… In fact many self-employed people are looking for work for as many hours as they’re working, and it soon adds up!

Being a virtual assistant I do have a few regular clients, but certainly not as many as I’d like. Ideally I would be happy with 2 or 3 regular clients who pay me a regular retainer package each month, at least then I would know my bills were covered. I don’t want to be rich, I just want to be able to live within my means and not have to worry where the next job is coming from.

Passive Income

So, in search of others ways I can work less hours and earn enough money to live on I decided I would go down the route of passive income. It’s something I have been thinking about for some time, and 2013 is going to be the year I put all my ideas in to practice.

Just last Friday I spent the whole day working on my first product which I am selling on my eBook formatting website. It’s a Microsoft Word template and it’s set-up so people can use it to type their manuscripts and use the various styles I have created to hopefully create an eBook which is suitable for uploading to Amazon Kindle and Smashwords. I have kept the price low, and there are some extra incentives which go with the template itself, which I hope will appeal to the authors/writers that would like to have a go at formatting their own eBook.

So I have been pretty busy thinking of ways I can earn some money while I sleep, which means I won’t have to work all hours just to pay the rent.

I love being self-employed and I love the feeling when another client pays an invoice, I know that the money is all mine and I’ve earn’t it. What I don’t like are the times when there is no work and my hours are spent looking for work, it’s a very precarious situation to be in when you’re self-employed, but I wouldn’t change it now.

How many blogs do you subscribe to?Do you manage to read all the blog posts you subscribe to each day?Are you constantly reading blog posts and not doing any other work?

This used to be me, it was a struggle to keep up with the amount of online reading I needed to do, what with everything going on in the social media world and trying to find relevant content to share with my social media fans/followers. It felt like a really tough slog most days until I found ways to streamline my reading.

I use two main tools, one I have mentioned many times before, Flipboard. I use it everyday, I would never be able to keep up with all the articles online without it. I have tried others but they don’t come close to the Flipboard interface as far as I am concerned. You can download the app on both iOS and Android, so you will need a smartphone to use it. Click here for all my articles mentioning Flipboard.

The other tool, which I don’t think I have mentioned on my blog before is Pocket. I have the app on my iPhone and on my iMac, and I think you can get this as a Google Chrome add-on (please correct me if I’m wrong someone?).

Pocket used to be called Read It Later. When I am going through Flipboard in the evenings and I find a really interesting article, instead of reading it all the way through there and then, I will click ‘read later’ on my iPhone and it will be added to Pocket. As I have the app on my iMac, if I get a spare 10 minutes during the day I can quickly find all the articles I want to take another look at, it’s synced between devices which is great!

This is how it looks on my iMac:

As you can see I have quite a few articles still in Pocket to go through, but it’s a safe place to keep them if I want to refer back to them at any stage. I can even add articles to Buffer (yes, mentioning it again) directly from the Pocket app, which is very handy.

Typically on a daily basis I only use these two tools to keep up with the blogs and social media network articles I come across. If I stumble upon a new blog that looks interesting (like I did yesterday, see the article in my Pocket image above) then I add it to my Google Reader account which automatically syncs it through to Flipboard. Simple!

What tools do you use to keep up with blogs you’re subscribed to, or the latest news online?

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